Envious Casca Read online

  ‘The trouble with you, my girl, is that you have a morbid mind,’ said Mathilda. ‘What’s that?’

  The sound of chains clanking round car-wheels had provoked this exclamation. Paula got up, and moved to the window. It had stopped snowing some hours earlier, but only a single pair of wheel-tracks disturbed the smooth whiteness of the drive and the deep lawn beyond it. A large limousine had drawn up before the front-door, and as Paula reached the window a figure in a Persian lamb coat and a skittish hat, perched over elaborately curled golden hair, alighted.

  ‘I think,’ said Paula, ‘I think it’s Mrs Dean.’

  ‘Good God, already?’ exclaimed Mathilda, getting up. ‘What’s she like?’

  ‘Just what you might have expected. Joe has tripped out to meet her.’

  ‘He would!’ said Mathilda.

  Not only Joseph had gone out to meet this new guest, but Valerie also. Before Joseph could utter his little speech of welcome, she had cast herself upon her parent’s awe-inspiring bosom, crying: ‘Oh, Mummy, thank goodness you’ve come! It’s all too frightful for words!’

  ‘My pet, of course Mummy has come!’ said Mrs Dean, in accents quite as thrilling as Paula’s. ‘Mummy had to be with her little girl at such a time.’ She extended a tightly gloved hand to Joseph, saying with an arch smile: ‘I shan’t ask my girlie to introduce you. I know that you are Stephen’s Uncle Joe! Val told me about you over the ‘phone, and how kind you have been to her. You must let a mother thank you, Mr Herriard!’

  Joseph turned quite pink with pleasure and responded gallantly that to be kind to Valerie was a privilege requiring no thanks.

  ‘Ah, I can’t have you turning my girlie’s head!’ said Mrs Dean. ‘Such a foolish childie as she is!’

  ‘Oh, Mummy, it’s been simply foul!’ said Valerie. ‘I couldn’t sleep a wink all night, and that beastly policeman upset me frightfully!’

  ‘I’m afraid our nerves aren’t over-strong,’ Mrs Dean confided to Joseph. ‘We’ve always been one of the delicate ones, and quite absurdly sensitive.’

  ‘Ah!’ said Joseph. ‘May I say that it is all too seldom nowadays that one encounters the bloom of innocence?’

  While uttering this speech, he had drawn Mrs Dean into the house, and Mathilda and Paula, who had come out of the library into the hall, were privileged to hear it. They perceived at once that Joseph had met a soul-mate, for Mrs Dean threw him a warm smile, and said: ‘I have always tried to keep the bloom on both my girlies. How one hates to see that dewy freshness vanish! You must forgive a mother’s foolish heart if I say that I can’t help wishing that this hadn’t happened!’

  ‘I know, and I understand,’ said Joseph earnestly.

  ‘If only my Val had not been in the house!’ said Mrs Dean, apparently stating her only objection to the murder.

  Joseph saw nothing ludicrous in this remark, but shook his head, and said with a heavy sigh: ‘How well I know what you must feel!’

  ‘You have young people of your own, I expect,’ said Mrs Dean, throwing open her coat and displaying a formidable bust, covered by a tightly fitting lace blouse and supporting a large paste brooch.

  ‘Alas, no! None of my own! But I count Stephen and Paula as my own. They are very dear to me,’ said Joseph, getting well into his stride.

  ‘I knew as soon as I saw you that my little girl had not exaggerated ‘Uncle Joe’s‘ kindness,’ declared Mrs Dean, laying a hand on his arm, and gently squeezing it. ‘You can’t deceive me! You are the good fairy in the house!’

  ‘Oh no, no, no!’ protested Joseph. ‘I’m afraid I’m only a foolishly sentimental old fellow who likes to see people happy around him! Ah, here is Paula! Paula, my dear, come and say how-do-you-do to Mrs Dean!’

  ‘My dear!’ ejaculated Mrs Dean, turning on her high heels as Paula advanced, and stretching out her hands. ‘So this is Stephen’s beloved sister! Let me look at you, childie! Yes, I can see something of Stephen. My poor child, this is a terrible time for you, and with your mother so many, many miles away! I shall claim the right of Stephen’s mother-inlaw to take his sister under my wing too.’

  The thought of Stephen’s being taken under Mrs Dean’s wing momentarily paralysed Paula. By the time she had recovered her breath sufficiently to repudiate the suggestion that she either missed her mother or wanted a substitute, Joseph had drawn Mathilda forward and was introducing her. He then said that Mrs Dean must be cold from her long drive, and begged her to sit down by the fire while he fetched his wife.

  ‘Now, you mustn’t make any difference for me, dear Mr Herriard, for I have come to be a help, and not a hindrance! I don’t want to cause anyone the least bit of trouble! I’m sure Mrs Herriard must be far too upset and shocked to be troubled by tiresome visitors. You must just not take a scrap of notice of me.’

  ‘You must have a cup of coffee and a sandwich!’ he said. ‘Do let me persuade you!’

  ‘Well, if you insist! But this is spoiling me, you know!’

  Paula, seeing no other way of escape, said that she would give the necessary order, and vanished, leaving Mathilda to cope with a situation that appalled her. Joseph trotted upstairs in search of Maud, and Mrs Dean disposed herself in a chair by the fire, and began to peel off her gloves.

  Mathilda, who had had time to observe the lady, had not missed the calculating light in the prominent blue eyes, and now noticed with malicious amusement the quick, appraising glance Mrs Dean cast about her, at her surroundings.

  ‘Mummy, I simply won’t be bullied by that ghastly policeman any more!’ said Valerie.

  ‘No one will bully you while Mummy is here to protect you, my pet,’ responded her parent. ‘But, childie dear, you must run up, and change out of that frock!’

  ‘Oh, hell, Mummy, why?’

  ‘Hush, dear! You know Mummy doesn’t like her girlies to use that sort of language! You shouldn’t have put on the primrose today: it isn’t suitable.’

  ‘I know, but I haven’t got anything black, and anyway no one else is bothering.’

  ‘No, dear, Mummy knows you haven’t anything black, but you have your navy. Now, don’t argue with Mummy, but run off and change!’

  Valerie said that it was a foul nuisance, and the navy suit made her look a hag, but Mathilda was interested to see that she did in fact obey Mrs Dean’s command. She began to suspect that that lady’s smile and sugared sweetness masked a will of iron, and looked at her with misgiving.

  Mrs Dean, having smoothed out her gloves, now extricated herself from her fur coat, revealing a figure so tightly corseted about the hips and waist, so enormous above as to appear slightly grotesque. As though to add to the startling effect of this method of dealing with a superabundance of fat, she wore a closely fitting and extremely short skirt. Above the confines of the hidden satin and whalebone, her bust thrust forward like a platform. A short neck supported a head crowned with an elaborate coiffure of rolled curls. Large pearl studs were screwed into the lobes of her ears; and the hat that perched at a daring angle over one eye was very smart, and far too tiny for a woman of her bulk. She was quite as lavishly made-up as her daughter, but could never, Mathilda decided, have been as pretty as Valerie.

  Mrs Dean, having taken covert stock of Mathilda, said: ‘Such terrible weather, isn’t it? Though I suppose one mustn’t complain.’

  ‘No,’ agreed Mathilda, offering her a cigarette. ‘The weather is about the only seasonable feature confronting us. Will you smoke?’

  ‘I wonder if you will think me very rude if I have one of my own? I always smoke my own brand. One gets into the habit of it, doesn’t one?’

  ‘Indeed, yes,’ said Mathilda, watching her extract an enamelled case from her handbag, and take from it a fat Egyptian cigarette with a gold tip.

  ‘I expect,’ said Mrs Dean, ‘you are all quite disorganised, and no wonder! On Christmas Eve, too! Tell me all about it! You know that Val was only able to give me the barest details.’

  Luckily for Mathilda, who did no